CNN: Obama likely to pick female nominee?
In the very early stages of the selection process to replace Justice David Souter, Obama administration officials say there is a strong inclination to pick a woman, but stress there is no short list and the field of candidates is wide open.

CNN: Rice: Bush wouldn't approve illegal interrogations
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defended the Bush administration's policies on the interrogation of terrorism suspects Sunday, saying former President George W. Bush would not have authorized anything illegal.

NYT: Senators Accuse Pentagon of Delay in Recovering Millions
The Pentagon has done little to collect at least $100 million in overcharges paid in deals arranged by corrupt former officials of Kellogg Brown & Root, the defense contractor, even though the officials admitted much of the wrongdoing years ago, two senators have complained in a letter to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

Washington Post: 4th-Grader Questions Rice on Waterboarding
Days after telling students at Stanford University that waterboarding was legal "by definition if it was authorized by the president," former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice was pressed again on the subject yesterday by a fourth-grader at a Washington school.

Newsweek: That’s One Classy Mom
Michelle Obama likes to call herself the "mom in chief." Images abound of the first lady frolicking on the White House swing set with Malia and Sasha. Basically, you'd have to be living under a rock not to know that Michelle is a mama. Yet when people were asked in a recent Pew Research poll to pick one word to describe her, only seven out of the 765 surveyed used the word "mother." (The most common was "classy.") In a similar 2001 poll, 24 out of 1,212 described Laura Bush as a mother—a slightly higher ratio—even though her daughters were in college.

Boston Globe: Accidental deaths plaguing US in Iraq
The 130,000 American troops serving in Iraq are more likely to die in accidents, from natural causes, or in other "nonhostile" incidents than at the hands of insurgents, according to Defense Department statistics for the past eight months ending in April.

CNN: Confirmed cases of H1N1 virus approach 900
The World Health Organization cautioned that the swine flu outbreak could gain momentum in the months ahead, despite claims by the health secretary of Mexico - the epicenter of the outbreak - that the virus "is in its declining phase."

CNN: Cowboys scout paralyzed after canopy collapse
A Dallas Cowboys scouting assistant suffered a broken back and has been permanently paralyzed after the collapse of the team's practice canopy during a heavy thunderstorm, the Cowboys announced Sunday.

Washington Post: The Pork Lobbyists, Ready to Reassure
It was Day 7 of the great swine flu outbreak, and inside the eighth-floor conference room in a concrete hulk of an office building on Capitol Hill, the pork lobbyists were in crisis mode. The National Pork Producers Council, whose members were watching with dismay as hog prices fell, labored to reverse the public dialogue about the fast-spreading virus and to convince consumers that the "other white meat" was still safe to eat.

WSJ: The Age of Pandemics
In 1967, the country's surgeon general, William Stewart, famously said, "The time has come to close the book on infectious diseases. We have basically wiped out infection in the United States." This premature victory declaration, perhaps based on early public health victories over 19th-century infectious diseases, has entered the lore of epidemiologists who know that, if anything, the time has come to open the book to a new and dangerous chapter on 21st-century communicable diseases.

LA Times: Schools consider four-day weeks
Facing deep funding cuts during the economic downturn, increasing numbers of school districts nationwide are contemplating trimming the traditional school week to four days to save money.

USA Today: Seniors at home in co-housing
Projects such as Silver Sage are called co-housing. European-inspired housing built around a common area and a social compact that all residents agree to, co-housing has existed on a small scale in the USA for years. Now, the concept is coming to senior housing, a trend supported by advocates who favor independent living for the old.

Washington Post Op-Ed: Spellings: 'No Child' in Action
Student achievement results from the "nation's report card" published last week show that we are on the right track. Since enactment of the bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act, which called for all students to be on grade level in reading and math by 2014, students have been making progress in reading and math in elementary and middle school. Improvement has been greatest for African American and Hispanic students and those students who are lowest-achieving.

LA Times: Army extends immigrant recruiting
Starting today, 10 Los Angeles-area Army recruiting offices will begin taking applications from some foreigners who are here on temporary visas or who have been granted asylum.

Boston Globe: Agree or else, Globe tells unions
Boston Globe management was continuing to negotiate concessions with its major unions well past a midnight deadline, but said it was prepared to file a plant closing notice with the state today if they failed to reach agreement. That would allow the paper's owner, the New York Times Co., to follow through on its threat to shutter the 137-year-old newspaper.

CNN: Egyptian farmers protest mandatory swine slaughter
Pig farmers threw rocks at police officers in Cairo, Egypt, on Sunday as health workers gathered the farmers' herds for slaughter in what the government says is a precaution against the spread of swine flu, an interior ministry official told CNN.

NYT: Pakistan Strife Raises U.S. Doubts on Nuclear Arms
As the insurgency of the Taliban and Al Qaeda spreads in Pakistan, senior American officials say they are increasingly concerned about new vulnerabilities for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, including the potential for militants to snatch a weapon in transport or to insert sympathizers into laboratories or fuel-production facilities.

WSJ: Slump Hits Armenia Despite Its Isolation
Most countries hammered by the financial crisis ran into trouble because their banks crumbled, their exports collapsed or they ran up too much debt. Armenia, a landlocked nation of three million in the Caucasus, has a different problem.

WSJ: New York Fed Chairman's Ties to Goldman Raise Questions
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York shaped Washington's response to the financial crisis late last year, which buoyed Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and other Wall Street firms. Goldman received speedy approval to become a bank holding company in September and a $10 billion capital injection soon after.

Financial Times: Fiat plans European car supergroup
Sergio Marchionne, Fiat chief executive, is on Monday due to outline plans to transform the global automotive landscape by spinning off Fiat’s core cars division, joining it with Chrysler and General Motors Europe, and creating a new publicly traded European car company.

Washington Post: How OpenTable Could Actually Matter
Dot com meltdown survivor and restaurant reservation software company OpenTable had been a rumored IPO candidate for a while. Still, it shocked many when it finally filed its intention to debut on the Nasdaq back in January. What? Does this company just have a thing for market meltdowns?

Business Week: GM: The Government Is in Charge
The Obama Administration has "no desire to run an auto company on a day-to-day basis," says White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. If so, somebody forgot to tell the team of Treasury Dept. staffers and management consultants now camped out at the Detroit Renaissance Center, a hotel and office complex anchored by General Motors' (GM) headquarters. There, GM executives are mapping out a survival strategy ahead of a government-imposed June 1 deadline to squeeze concessions from bondholders and the United Auto Workers union or face bankruptcy.